


Stellar Evolution

by oraclerose



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Multi, Other, POV Dipper Pines, POV Second Person, Sibling Bonding, i apologize for the weird pov i'm still a filthy homestuck when it comes to writing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 12:32:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5163962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oraclerose/pseuds/oraclerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Stellar evolution is the process by which a star changes during its lifetime."</p>
<p>The Apocalypse is over, the Pines family survived, the Journals are being rewritten, Bill Cipher is gone, and summer is finally over.</p>
<p>But only Gravity Falls can remember Weirdmageddon, and after an entire summer of fighting to stay together, Dipper and Mabel realize home is important. So they go home.</p>
<p>Oh, and turns out Bill Cipher isn't as dormant as everyone would like to believe.</p>
<p>----<br/>Tags will be added as needed for relationships and triggers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nebulae

**Author's Note:**

> A nebula is an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium and other ionized gases. Nebulae are often star-forming regions, such as in the "Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula. In these regions the formations of gas, dust, and other materials "clump" together to form larger masses, which attract further matter, and eventually will become massive enough to form stars.

Walking in the door, you knew something wasn’t right. Aside from the usual greetings and questions about the summer, the ride home had been oddly silent. It was as if you were on the phone with your parents, neither of them all there due to distance, whatever that meant. Mabel still chattered over dinner, seemingly oblivious to the tension just under the surface as your parents nodded to her stories.

And then the bubble burst for good as the plates were cleared away and they folded their hands for a family talk. You glance over at Mabel with a shrug just before they start talking.

“Kids, we have to tell you something, it’s important.” You barely have time to think what could be so important on the first evening back home.

“We decided to send you to Stans so you didn’t have to hear all the talks.”

“It’s a mutual divorce...we’re finalizing it all in a few weeks.”

“Oh, you really want to tell them like this?”

“Do you have a better idea, hm?”

You weren’t sure you had heard any of your parents words after a minute in, the word ‘divorce’ just kept circling your brain like an eye bat stuck in the kitchen. It’s all fractured sentences and disjointed words as they speak over each other.

“I just mean, they’re kids, they’re not going to understand it all.”

“Way to be condescending.”

You can tell you’ve got a glazed look on your face. Beside you, Mabel is starting to sniff. “I-is it because of something we did?”

“Oh sweetie, of course not.”

“Well…”

“You be quiet, this is not their fault.”

Mabel sucks in a breath and latches onto your hand as if it were a lifeline. “S-so you don’t love each other anymore?” She sounds distraught at the very idea. Love is what Mabel thrives on, and you know this is hurting her in a million new ways.

The look that passes between your parents is going to haunt you both for a long time. “Mabel, not the way we need to.”

As you both trudge up to your room for the night, you can hear your parents whispering in the living room. “Honestly, I’m not sure we ever did.”

And something in you and your twin cracks. Roughly patched together as you were after the summer, this only made the universe feel even more impermanent.

Mabel crawls into bed and cries, quiet sobs that make her shudder under the blankets and shake stuffed animals loose from the bed. Your eyes are streaming too, but you stop by her bed and catch her hand in yours until she drifts to sleep. Then you head for your bed, find the flashlight under your mattress and skim the copied journal pages for anything about falling out of love, before closing the plastic binder with a soft click that resounds in the bare room.

Most of your stuff is still back in Gravity Falls, Grunkle Stan is going to send it down over the next few weeks once the end of summer travel calms down. Ford hadn’t understood a thing when Stan was rambling on about shipping fares and travel fees.

You miss the shack, miss your attic room with all your things and all the trinkets from your adventures around town. There’s no pig cuddled up with Mabel either, she’d had to leave Waddles at the Shack.

“Dipper, you still up?” Mabel whispers sleepily from her pillow. “Get some sleep, please. Don’t need you eating your shirt or getting possessed again.”

You crack a smile. “Alright. G’night Mabel.”

“Night Dipper.”

Pulling the blanket up you settle into a comfortable position, ignoring how lying down here feels somehow disorienting. As if the room is slowly spinning around you.

“Hey Dipper?”

“Yeah?”

“I miss home.”

Home was the shack. Home was magic and adventures and beating up unicorns and raising the dead. Home was Grunkle Stan and Ford, Soos and Wendy and Grenda and Candy and secrets and conspiracies and pancakes at 5am when someone gets an idea to watch the sunrise. Home was firecrackers and conning tourists and screaming while running through the forest.

“Me too.”

Sleep doesn't come easy, and your dreams are full of laughing triangles and bleeding skies.


	2. Protostar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A protostar is a large mass that forms by contraction of the gas of a giant molecular cloud in the interstellar medium. The protostellar phase is an early stage in the process of star formation.

The next two days pass in relative silence as you and your sister try to settle back in, a surprisingly difficult task. Walking around your home town was not allowed, being in a suburb on the outskirts of the city, it wasn’t deemed safe for two young teens to adventure alone. Going anywhere involved your parents driving you, there was no golf cart freedom, no convenience store or town center within running distance. The few local neighbor kids are looking at you both funny and you can’t quite tell why.

Mabel says it's something like you holding yourself more like Ford, and you realize that when Mabel is upset she acts a lot like Stan, something about her eyes narrowing and the way her fingers can knot into fists under her sweaters. You know she still tucks the grappling hook in her sweater, but she knows you still have a magnet gun somewhere, so you’re even on that level of paranoia.

School starts in under a week. Eighth grade, the last year before high school starts. Mom takes Mabel shopping for yarn and sneakers while you and Dad sort through what's left over from last years supplies. There’s a few notebooks, you rescue a covered binder for Mabel to decorate later, and enough glitter pens to last through the apocalypse. You think that can be considered an expert evaluation.

The journal copy is tucked beside you, a weird comfort item after the originals were burnt, as much a part of you as your hands are. Dad looks at it weird since you never let it out arms reach. Stan had given you a set of the journal 3 copies; he hadn’t thought to make sets of the others at the time. Ford had mumbled something about losing his invisible ink and restarting a catalog of Gravity Falls creatures and the locals, through less intrusive means. The town had only gotten weirder after the apocalypse only it could remember.

“Dipper, can I ask something?”

You shrug. “Sure.” You tuck a few glitter pens in the journal, test the navy blue on your hand to find it actually writes in red.

Dad sighs and glances at the journal again. “Me and your mom, we’re going to be splitting the house and most of our stuff, and I was wondering where you’d rather go.”

“Go?”

“With your mom or me. The courts agreed to let us split custody of you two.”

The pen cap digs into your palm as your grip tightens on it. “Split custody?”

“Yeah, one of you goes to live with your mom, one with me. You’ll see each other pretty often, we’re not leaving Piedmont, but we can’t....Dipper?”

This cannot be happening. You feel sick and your face feels hot while the fingers tightening around the pen only get colder. “Y-you’re taking us away from each other?”

“Dipper, it’s only across the city. Besides, you’re thirteen now, you and your sister aren’t going to be best friends forever, your mom and her sister aren’t that close anymore.” Dad says.

But you’ve seen this road, seen the postcards stuck in Soos’s pocket on a bad day, heard the stiff calls between your mother and aunt, seen the visits dwindle and stop cold. Across the city is across the world for the lives of people who never want to see each other again, and want to take you and your sister down with them.

“But that’s not fair!” You yell. “Mabel and I are best friends, I don’t want to grow up without her!” Suddenly you’re on your feet and at eye level with your dad, almost above him as you feel the pen snap in your hand, red ink dripping around your fingers and seeping into your palm.

“Dipper, really, she’s just your sister! Most kids would love to have some space!”

“We’ve spent all summer dealing with stuff trying to pull us apart and now you’re doing it too?!” You wipe the ink down your shirt and palm the journal from the floor. “Ugh, I’d rather the zombies to this!”

Before your dad can process the words you’re running upstairs and diving for the phone in the hall. You hurriedly type moms cell number, and hope to whatever that she picks up.

She does.

_“Hello?”_

“Hi, mom, it’s Dipper. Can you put Mabel on? I found some supplies she might like and wanted to ask her what to save.”

_“Sure thing sweetie.”_ Her voice gets farther away as she calls Mabel from somewhere in the store. There’s a scuffle of footsteps and phone jostling before a voice comes over the line.

_“Hiya Dipper! Mom said you found something?_

You take a deep breath. “Mabel they’re gonna split us up when they get the divorce and we won’t be able to live together! Dad just asked me who I wanted to go with! Mabel!” Your voice is cracking with tears and fear and that monster of anxiety is making your chest hurt as it gets harder to breath.

_“Bro-bro, I’m gonna have to put you on hold.”_ Mabels voice goes deadly calm, and you hear her breath before full on screaming. The phone isn’t anywhere near her mouth and the phone line nearly goes to static.

_“YOU WERE GONNA SPLIT ME AND DIPPER UP?!”_

Mom sounds like she’s scrambling for an explanation, clearly not prepared for a thirteen year olds anger in the middle of what sounds like a department store. The line goes dead, the last thing you hear is Mabel muttering a few of the words Grunkle Stan always said not to repeat. 

You take the phone and run into your room, shutting the door and locking it before kneeling to reach under your bed. Pulling a thin metal box free from the still unpacked bags, which has a handle on one side and latches, you flip it open. The laptop, on loan from Ford and Fiddleford after the two connected it to the internet, beeps when it’s turned on.

Ford had given it to you both to share since there was only your parents computers in the house, and you’re unhappy that you need to use it for such depressing means. Wiping away the tears pooling in your eyes makes a few drop around the keyboard, and despite the outburst at Dad you’re already hiccuping with quiet sobs.

“I’m not letting this happen.”

Googling a few key numbers, you start dialing on the handset and cough a few times to clear your voice.

_“Gravity Falls School district, how can I help you today?”_

You survived the apocalypse with Mabel, you’re not getting pulled apart just because of some dumb divorce. You refuse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Say hi to me over on tumblr at http://www.witchoftimes.tumblr.com
> 
> Kudos and comments are greatly appreciated!

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first time writing in the Gravity Falls fandom, and lemme say, I'm surprised how well this universe flows with my thought process. I love the Pines family dynamic, and I'm looking foward to writing everyone.
> 
> It always seemed a bit odd to me that the twins parents would suddenly 'ship them up to gravity falls', and after seeing some headcanons, I'm pretty sure their parents are getting a divorce or something along those lines. So this fic was written as a response to that. I hope you all enjoy, and please leave kudos or comments if you liked it!
> 
> I've got a tumblr if you wanna say hi: http://www.witchoftimes.tumblr.com


End file.
